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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Umbran" data-source="post: 6263130" data-attributes="member: 177">I think, when you're discussing in formal literary terms, amount of magic isn't quite the difference.High Fantasy takes place in something that is explicitly not our world - in high fantasy, the real (aka "primary") world does not exist (Like Discworld), the secondary world is entered through a portal from the primary (Chronicles of Narnia), or exists as a delineated but secret separate subset of the primary (like Harry Potter).  The separation is usually (but not always) done because the rules and/or history of the secondary world vary enormously from the primary's, so they clearly cannot mix.  The plots of high fantasy stories tend to be epic in scope (why else make up a whole world, except to explore the whole thing and put it in danger?).  LotR is troublesome, in that Tolkien adamantly maintained that his story took place in the primary world, in the distant past.  But, it is divergent enough from the real world, that most folks today call it High Fantasy. FR is clearly high fantasy.Low fantasy takes place in the primary world, or something that arguably could be the primary, with a few supernatural elements added in (like, say Conan).  The plots tend to be less epic in scope, because it is hard to imagine putting the real world at risk with something that normally has no impact on the world.  The inclusion of the supernatural in the primary world usually ends up with comedic or horrific effect, as the purpose is to juxtapose the magical reality with the primary reality, and when you clash reason with unreason, comedy or horror are the usual results.  That horror, and the limitation on the characters who must operate under primary-world rules tends to lead to a "gritty" result."The Green Mile" (by Stephen King) and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" are low fantasy."Middle fantasy" is not a term I'm familiar with.  I would expect it to have been coined by folks who felt that the difference between high and low was in the amount of magic and epic scope alone, so that something in between would be the middle.</blockquote>

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